


Visitors

by strangetale



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Gen, Post-Battle of Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 14:11:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5166746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetale/pseuds/strangetale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minerva, shortly after the Battle of Hogwarts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Visitors

She dreams of the dead.

McGonagall has survived three wars since Grindelwald's rise to power. There are too many faces that come to her in sleep.

The earliest losses—her parents, a brother, the man she loved, the child she carried—always visit first. Grindelwald's ambition took them. At the time, she was certain her heart had been rent into so many pieces that it could never be damaged again, but other wars, other losses, have proven her wrong. Once, they haunted her nearly every night and she would wake in anguish. Now, they flit past and she gives them a perfunctory nod. Their loss is no longer a grievous wound to keen over. It is as much a part of her as her magic: always present, and taken for granted.

Her next visitors are more painful to recognize. They are the victims of Voldemort's first war. His Death Eaters took her sister and remaining brother, nieces and nephews, schoolmates, and, worst of all, former students. Some of them were scarcely out of school. With them comes memory of the fear that haunted those days. Nowhere had been safe, and each day had brought a new loss.

One visitor slides into the next, each a fresh shock, until she sees Albus. In her dreams, his hair is still auburn and he gives her the indulgent, encouraging smile she remembers from her childhood. There is the merest shadow hovering over the hand that was blackened in the last year of his life, a tiny hint of his fate. Albus lingers long, telling her not to mourn the things neither of them could change. She senses that he is trying to distract her, delay her, protect her with his reassuring babble. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Remus approaching. Albus shifts position, drawing her eye away from him.

“No need,” he says gently. “No need to see them all just yet. This grief will come soon enough.”

But it is already too late: Remus is there, with Nymphadora at his side. Severus scowls from a distance. She sees Fred Weasley, and suddenly there are too many people crowding her. Voldemort's last victims have come to pay their respects.

Colin Creevey proves to be the final straw. While a part of her brain repeats that he couldn't have been there, he was too small and too bloody young, he looks up at her and says, “I had to stay, Professor. I had to fight for Hogwarts.”

She wakes with a jerk, feeling bereft and disoriented. It's early afternoon and Hogwarts lies in ruins. Down in the Great Hall, Molly Weasley is huddled over her son's body.

With a sigh, McGonagall rises. A brief nap will have to do. There are so many tasks awaiting her. She thinks it likely that most of the dead will be buried here at Hogwarts, and arrangements should be made to accommodate as many of the family members as possible. She will have to visit the Creeveys and other parents of muggleborn victims and try to explain to them how their children died.

The castle needs repairs, and she must persuade the Board of Governers, whoever that might be now, that all of the students should receive counseling. Nearly all of them, even the ones who were nominally at school, will need to repeat a year, and who will pay the fees for that?

_The Death Eaters should_ , she thinks grimly. _Let them make restitution for some small portion of the harm they've caused. Confiscating the estates of the Carrows would be especially appropriate._

Hermione Granger will doubtless wish to return to Hogwarts for a NEWT year. If McGonagall can persuade Potter, Longbottom, Lovegood, and the younger Weasleys to make up the schooling they've missed, the other students will follow. And where will they be housed? She'll need to speak to Flitwick about coaxing the castle into adding an extra dormitory to each House. Unless Horace is willing to stay on, she'll need to find a new Head for Slytherin, and she'll definitely need one for Gryffindor. She'll need to hire more teaching staff, and probably find additional house elves. How many of them have been lost in the battle?

With all of that before her, McGonagall first sits down to pen a note. Basil Winkelthorne is an old friend of hers, and a widely-respected mind healer. He slipped away from St. Mungo's when the Ministry began pursuing muggleborns, but McGonagall knows where he's hiding.

She wants him to come to Hogwarts immediately, tonight if possible. She trusts him, and desperately needs his help for the children—and herself.

_Small battles can take just as much courage as the large ones_ , Basil once told her decades ago, when she was struggling for normalcy in the aftermath of Grindelwald's fall. _It is always easier to destroy. To rebuild from the ashes—whether it is buildings or lives—takes more strength, and more faith._

No doubt her visitors will return tonight, and for many nights to come. She puts all thought of them aside as she summons a house elf, hoping there's at least one owl still left in the castle. Her next war has begun.

 


End file.
